


Miscellaneous HP shorts

by a_t_rain



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-23 12:11:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3767695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_t_rain/pseuds/a_t_rain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Various (very) short Harry Potter fics, written for McTabby's Cat's Birthday Drabblethon between 2006 and 2009.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> All but the last of these were written before _Deathly Hallows_ , so they're not DH-compliant.
> 
> The first one was written for velvetmouse, who requested: Snape. McGonagall. Anchovies. Honey. And a student's misunderstanding of a spell. Must be rated G.

At first, Severus hadn’t minded that the Headmistress seemed to be channeling the spirit of her predecessor. The old Minerva McGonagall would have pressed charges for Professor Dumbledore’s murder, even though Dumbledore had asked him to do it; the new one merely listened to his story in silence and remarked that Hogwarts would always give shelter to those in trouble. She also insisted that he return to the Potions position, as Slughorn had Transfigured himself into an armchair again, but at the time Severus had been grateful enough to agree to anything.

He changed his mind less than a week after the beginning of the new term, when he encountered Cathy Macmillan and her execrable attempt at a Cake-Frosting Potion. She _said_ she was attempting buttercream with a note of honey, but both the cooking spells and the frosting had gone disastrously wrong. Severus resented the fact that he was expected to teach cooking spells at all, but McGonagall had insisted on that, too. She’d developed a sweet tooth of late, as well as an irritating twinkle in the eyes, and she had even swapped her squarish spectacles for half-moon ones. Next thing you knew, Severus thought sourly, she would take to wearing a false beard. It was clearly up to _him_ to halt the insanity and restore her to her normal flinty self before it was too late.

Feeling malicious, Severus relieved the Macmillan girl of the plate of cakes and left them in the staff room, where he lurked in the shadows and awaited his victim.

McGonagall helped herself to a cake, settled into the depths of the armchair-that-was-Slughorn and took a bite.

“Alas,” she said in a mellow and meditative voice. “Anchovies!”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For chicleeblair, who requested "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds." This one, for a change, is an actual drabble.

“Tom!” Merope ran bareheaded into the street. “TOM!!!”

There was no answer; only the clatter of hailstones and the mewing of a stray cat in a London alley, so many miles from her home.

She looked for him all day. In the evening she bought a bottle of gin and finished the cigarettes he’d left on the bedside table and cried and cried, and then threw up in the sink and cried some more. Dawn broke, and she had a thought that made her stop crying.

He might not be hers any more. But she would never stop being his.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For waterbird, who wanted "Peter, Remus, and the end of the second war." I still wish we had gotten this ending in canon.

“Moony?”

Remus is trying to stanch the bleeding. It takes him a moment to respond. “Yes. It’s me, Peter.”

(Not the childhood nickname; not the name Voldemort used. Not now.)

“I sent ... a map. Any good?”

“Yes. It was a very good map.” Actually, it had been one of the worst maps Remus had ever seen, drawn left-handed by a right-handed man with a bad case of the shakes. But it had served.

He finds Peter’s remaining hand and grips it to still the shaking. Peter had been an excellent draftsman, once.

“I won’t go ... to Azkaban?”

“No, you won’t. We’ll make sure you don’t. You won the war for us,” Remus lies. The Order will speak for him, but it is highly unlikely that the Ministry will listen. They like their heroes clean, and Peter has already embarrassed them once.

He looks again at the watery blue eyes, going glassy now, and realizes that he told the truth after all. Peter will never go to Azkaban.

He talks. Talks to keep the silence at bay, to distract a dying man from his pain, to keep himself from having to think. “It was an excellent map, showed the positions of Voldemort and all the Death Eaters. Good work. Moody kept it at headquarters, and Hermione had an idea, there are these Muggle devices called _walkie talkies_ , sort of like a wireless for only two people, and she thought it would help if we could communicate with Moody during the battle and he could tell us where the Death Eaters were. So we ordered up some of Fred and George’s inventions, they call them Extendible Ears, and ... You remember Fred and George, don’t you? Ron Weasley’s brothers.”

“Yeah.” He can hardly hear Peter now. “Put me ... in Aunt Muriel’s hat once. She screamed.”

He smiles, and never stops smiling, and the Marauders are at an end.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For miramiraficfic, who wanted "A brief history of one of the Elder Wand's less distinguished owners."

There were once three brothers named Arcus, Livius, and Jack. Arcus and Livius were famous duelers, but Jack – so everyone said – was a simpleton. He stayed home with the dog.

In those days a dreadful warlock named Loxius ruled their country. He owned an elder wand called the “Deathstick,” and with it he destroyed all who opposed him. None dared do battle with him except Arcus and Livius; and when the two brothers rode forth, old women crossed themselves and everyone in the village drew their shutters, expecting Loxius’s wrath to fall upon them all. Everyone, that is, except Jack. He sat by the fire, stirring a cauldron of mulled mead.

Arcus and Livius rode home, much battered, and promptly fell to quarreling. Loxius’s castle was a smoldering pile of ashes, and all that was left of the terrible wizard was his Deathstick, which both brothers claimed for their own.

“Why are you quarreling?” asked Jack. “Did Loxius escape?”

“What?” said Arcus. “No, no, Loxius is dead.”

“Then why so angry? Have some mead, brothers, and be merry.”

“It is more than a fool like you can understand,” said Livius. “Power – glory – rule over life and death –”

“Mead,” said Jack.

At last Arcus and Livius accepted two great mugs of mead; and because they were wounded and very weary, it quickly went to their heads and they fell asleep by the fire.

Jack saw the elder wand lying on the table, but he did not know what it was.

“Fetch, Brownie.”

When Arcus and Livius woke, they were furious. “You made the DOG Lord of the Deathstick? You idiot!”

Brownie gnawed on the Elder Wand and thumped his tail on the floor.

It is said that the brothers were the first owners of the Elder Wand to see old age.


End file.
